CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
When I went to see The Green Book yesterday there was a British Airways ad on saying how great the British are. It didn’t persuade me to book a flight*.
It was full of tv celebs and sports stars. At least the memsahib said it was. The only one I knew was Grayson Perry.
*I was last on a plane in ‘86 so they haven’t lost much business.
Took me a while to figure out why this line was stuck in my head;
Their idea of fun
Is being in a gang
Called 'The Disciples'
High on crack
And totin' a machine gun
But of course it's the perfect summing up of the UK's Defence Secretary and its 'enhanced lethality'.
All this 'drones' and 'lethality' garbage makes me think someone has pitched "hey we can block their airports' runways and ransom them for fresh tomatoes" and has been taken seriously.
'Drone swarms' led by F-35 jets will overwhelm Britain's enemies, Defence Secretary announces
Just a reminder that the F-35 does not work even to present specification and probably never will.
Also knowing the UK the drones will be purchased from Wonderland on Lothian Road.
@wee folding bike, I saw that ad as well, about how great "Britain" is - every celeb was English. No Scots, Irish or Welsh among the lot.
paulmilne I hadn't noticed that, and wouldn't really have cared. The ad wasn't working for me anyway.
I just found it funny that the only one I recognised was the worlds best known transvestite potter. He is a keen cyclist too.
Not long ago Vauxhall were plastering billboards with ads for their extremely middle-market motorised tin cans. I can't remember the actual wording or graphics but they were obviously trying quite hard to push themselves as British cars made in Britain. Maybe not too surprising given that Vauxhall Motors is headquartered in Luton, the Brexit capital of the Home Counties, but nonetheless jaw-droppingly ironic considering that the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Opel (German) which is itself a subsidiary of PSA (French - General Motors sold Opel to PSA in 2017.)
'which is itself a subsidiary of PSA (French - General Motors sold Opel to PSA in 2017.)'
Ah, I hadn't realised that. I once owned a Vectra, it was full of cheap plastic, and used putty for the suspension, I didn't keep it for long. I was in the new Insignia a couple of weekends ago and was surprised at how much more comfortable it was than the Vectra I'd had. Keenly priced too, £15K for a year old car, still didn't buy it though.
I've certainly sensed more of "we're British" tone to a number of ad campaigns since the EU referendum (the Vauxhall one being one of the more obvious), presumably to hitch a ride on the tub-thumping bandwagon. However, it's having the opposite impact on me to its intended effect, given the context of unpleasant nationalism and associated knaves...
The band’s drummer, Jason Feenan, 19, mentioned a video he had seen online of the then-Brexit secretary Dominic Raab being questioned by the Northern Irish MP Sylvia Hermon, and awkwardly admitting that he had never made time to read the Good Friday agreement. “Every household in the North has a copy of it,” Feenan marvelled. “You could read it in a day. And someone supposedly negotiating on our behalf couldn’t even be bothered.”
He looked pained. “It’s kind of Irish history repeating itself,” he said. “A decision’s made in England, and we’re just dragged along with it.”
This is an interesting proposal re the Irish backstop: In a nutshell, drop the backstop clause of the withdrawl agreement, take a limited time, say through 2020/21 to find a solution that doesn't require a hard border - if they can fine, if they can't, put it to the people of Northern Ireland what they want to do: go with the hard border or stay in a customs union with the EU.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/08/brexit-northern-ireland-backstop
put it to the people of Northern Ireland what they want to do: go with the hard border or stay in a customs union with the EU
Insofar as the UK of GB&NI has a constitution, that constitution allows for the holding of a poll when in the opinion of the secretary of state the majority of people in Northern Ireland support the unification of the island of Ireland.
In the event of the reintroduction of an international border where these bollards are it doesn't seem too improbable that a majority in Northern Ireland might wish to explore joining Ireland.
@iwrats Not entirely clear that the Rest of Ireland wants them? I mean in public some might say they do but they could be jiving too?
Yes indeed, O'quaintances of mine have also made this point. Polling data indicates that most Brexiteers are content to dispense with Northern Ireland to secure full exit from the EU for England.
Northern Ireland could be orphaned?
PS Did you like my link to the UK of GB&NI's 'constitution' being on the Taoiseach's website?
@iwrats, that good Friday agreement better be identical on the website of the other place.
@gembo, I shouldn't worry, allegedly the Northern Ireland ministers don't bother to read it anyway. Or at least Dominic Raab admitted he hadn't. Maybe Karen Bradley has?
@crowriver, yes laidback refers to a drummer in a popular beat combo winkling this nugget out of Dom Raab up thread.
I referred to Brexit as a monster in the Climate Change thread, then came across this:
Flybmi in admin.
“Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe."
Is this a 'green Brexit' dividend that Gove mentioned once? Less flights?
Of course other airlines will bid for slots.
Wonder how the right wing spin machines will spin this? Survival of the fittest I expect...
the Spanish warship sailed slowly along the Gibraltar coast with its weapons uncovered and manned
Well let's hope the British government isn't run by a bunch of sweaty in-bred chancers looking for a distraction from their various criminal conspiracies.
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